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How Did Blade’s Partners Survive Exploding?

In Death is not the End, we spotlight the outlandish explanations for comic book characters (mostly super-villains) surviving seeming certain death.

Today, we look at how the Nightstalkers broke up…seemingly permanently!

In the final issue of the Nightstalkers ongoing series (which starred three monster-hunting heroes from the old Tomb of Dracula series – Frank Drake, Blade and Hannibal King), Frank Lovece, Doug Wheatley and Frank Turner had the team fighting against the powerful vampire, Varnae, who has seemingly taken control of their vampire teammate, Hannibal King. So Frank Drake decided to set his fancy magic gun to explode….

Fairly final, right? Sad ending, though, for Frank Drake and Hannibal King, who were too awesome characters. Especially as it seemed really just designed to launch Blade into his own series.

Four years later, though, Christopher Golden, Gene Colan (who co-created Blade and Hannibal King) and Mark Pennington did the graphic novel, Blade: Crescent City Blues, where Blade heads to New Orleans in search of Deacon Frost and runs into none other than Hannibal King!

Marv Wolfman (co-creator of King and Blade) then wrote a short stint of Hannibal King as a lead feature in Journey Into Mystery before that series ended later in 1998.

I guess with vampires, it’s awfully easy to bring them back to life, huh? I am surprised we haven’t seen Frank Drake make a full return yet.